During the hustling seasons of Spring through Fall here on the farm it is hard to slow down long enough to catch your breath let alone count your blessings…but now that the field is sleeping and the days are shorten by hours I find myself doing just that. Being thankful for the little things that come with living and working here on the farm….the people and the lifestyle that happens here. Granted I am not a holiday ho..ho..ho person by any means..I do enjoy the spirit of it all,just not the shopping. I do not enjoy the whole shopping thing…
I am starting the first batch of seeds this week going into their planting trays for early spring crops. These will be the first plantings in Febuary. The CSA will open for signups mid January so keep an eye out for that. I guess I will get back to wrapping up these gifts for Christmas is just around the corner. Mark and I wish you all a Merry Christman and our best wishes for the New year.
Here we are in the early part of November and a couple of good frosts and 1 freeze under our belt and we still have some beds of greens that keep hanging on. That I love. Of course my son Lucca is pretty sick of seeing greens every night for dinner. I have been freezing bags of turnips, mustard greens and spinach for the past few days. This is so simple to do and come the dark, cold days of winter it is nice to pull out a bag of greens from the garden from the freezer. You just need to wash your fresh greens and put them into boiling water for a couple of minutes or until they turn bright green…this may in some case take less then 2 minutes. Once they have turned color remove them from the boiling water and put them into a bowl of ice water to stop them from cooking. Once they have cooled squeeze the water out of them and place them into a plastic freezer bag. That’s it! So easy and you will be happy you took a few minutes of your day to do this while the greens are in season and readily available.
This is a study of dirt time…I mean getting down there in it… smelling…looking at it…feeling of it through your fingers and then testing the dirt…the dirt will tell you what it needs and believe me it will need plenty of fresh compost and other minerals as well. I think of it like I do when I create a new food recipe…it takes trial and error to get the mixture right and some experience in the kitchen helps a great deal. We have a lot of fall varieties of vegetables coming up now with the cooler air and rain bring new life to the farm. So happy to see some of my favorites back out there growing. Kale, Lettuces and radishes are coming on and looking wonderful. We also have some beets, and carrots that should show up in the CSA baskets late October. Mustard greens and Arugula are really pretty right now coming up through the ground. I can’t wait to start harvesting those. Now…I need to get back to the to-do-list..I think I have spent enough time putting it off this morning:)
With the farm’s market being closed right now to the public due to the lack of rain and this heatwave it has made it easier around here to harvest the produce that is producing..and believe me there is plenty out there in the field that is still giving its all. The last couple of weekends we have had our fall CSA shareholders pickups and that has been great…for I can only put up so much. We had a few shareholders out of town or unable to pickup last weekend and this is what was left over after the pickups were over. I did take a couple of bags full over to my neighbors…and my sister Patsy went home with a bag of vegetables…although she calls me later and asked …now what is this green leafy stuff and what do I do with such & such? I try my best not to slap that girl…I have sent home bags of all this stuff with her before…I bet she tossed it and went for a hamburger instead.
Welcome to The Female Farmer! Life on a 38 acre organic farm...it's not always banjo's and butterflies out here on the farm, People!
The winter weather sets bone deep
True, winter time is the time of year I tend to hibernate…well early winter that is for in the next few weeks I will be up to my neck in seedlings all waiting for the weather to break and find a new sunny home out into the field. I put up my farmers boots for house slippers and spend my time…well, bored and lazy. Well now that it is January the ticking of spring starts sounding in my ears and seeds, pots, trays and grow lights begins to shine all of which turn the farmhouse into a greenhouse. I can’t say I don’t like it though because I do…life giving baby seedlings who wouldn’t love that? This is also the time of year when we start opening our CSA program up for sign ups and plan what sort of spring and summer we are looking at. We limit our CSA program to 35-40 people each season keeping this number we have been able to weather seasons that have taken many of our fellow CSA farms out for the season. The key is to running a CSA program is having enough experience to not get greedy. That is the number 1 killer for newbie CSA farms. They just get too greedy a lot of them and never really have grown more then a few tomatoes in their lives think too big too fast and end up not being able to deliver to their shareholders. I always stress to the new farmers that want to start a farm CSA program 1. start by growing a few years and selling at a farmers market consistently.This is separates the real farmers quick. 2. When starting a CSA program start very small. You can always sell your extra produce at the farmers market on even a parking lot for that matter. The main thing is learning how to grow and how to grow well. When shareholders sign up for a CSA program they are making a big investment in your experience as a farmer. And no, wearing rubber boots and a floppy hat and some overhauls doesn’t make you a farmer…hands in the dirt is the only way to gain that knowledge and it takes more then a couple seasons to really get a hang of growing anything. A couple of years ago we had a really hard dry season that was brutally hot on top of it. We were barely hanging on ourselves with several years of organic farming under our belt. At least once a week we got calls from other farmers needing to either move their shareholders to another CSA or wanting to buy any extra produce we had to give their shareholders something. It was a year that truly took some tough farming and some committed shareholders. Keeping your shareholders to a limited number really helps and it is always great when you have great bountiful years and can load them up with lots of great locally grown, organic vegetables. My advice is to plan for the best…but prepare for the worst. This way you have some room to make a few mistakes, take some risks and if the rains don’t fall and the heat goes sky-high you are still skilled enough and smart enough to work through it and keep your CSA shareholders happy they found their farmer.